By Michael Eck, Special to the Times Union
Autumn 1943. Machinists Joe Keller and Steve Deever send a shipment of faulty cylinder heads to the United States Air Force, deep in the thick of the Pacific campaign. A few weeks later, 21 planes fall from the sky, sending the pilots to their deaths.
Anyone familiar with the golden age of American drama knows the rest of the story ends just as badly, on home soil in a Midwestern backyard.
Arthur Miller wrote “All My Sons” in 1947, when memories of World War II were still fresh and sore. It was a gambit on his part, and Miller swore that if the play failed, he would look for other employment. It did not, and he went on to become one of the most important American playwrights of the 20th century, mostly by spinning other tales rife with battles between brothers, families and friends.
North Bennington native Allen McCullough is directing “All My Sons” for the Theatre Company at Hubbard Hall, in a production that opens Friday.
It is — bravely — his first time in the director’s chair.
McCullough is a veteran actor who is certainly familiar to Hubbard Hall audiences. He has appeared there under founding artistic director Kevin McGuire in “Private Lives,” “The Real Thing,” “Playboy of the Western World” and a touring outdoor production of “As You Like It.”
But he is confident that his onstage skills will work to his favor in this endeavor.
“It’s an actor’s piece,” he says. “People tell me I’m a pretty good actor and I have good actor instincts, so I’ve really approached it from that point of view — working on it as an actor, rather than from some top-down directorial idea.”
In fact, it was fellow TCHH vet Michael Maloney who asked McCullough to come on board.
“Michael really wanted to do this play, and he thought of me as the director, and they asked me if I would be interested.”
Maloney is playing George, Steve Deever’s son and Ann Deever’s older brother.
“All My Sons” is — by structure and definition — an American tragedy, with its arc carefully modeled on the classic aspects of the form.
McCullough — who actually met Miller once while playing a small role in “The Crucible” early in his acting career — is fascinated by that element of the play.
He says, “Miller really did go to the Greek tragic models for this play, and my thinking was that if we could just tell the story well it would be fine, and (as a director) I could just sort of get out of the way of it.”
“The play has such good bones — the structure is so impeccable — that if you’re acting it well, the story tells itself. I don’t think it needs a lot of embellishment. He wrote it the way he wrote it for good reason, and it works.”
David Braucher plays Keller, accompanied by Joan Coombs, Josh Bywater, Melissa Herion and others.
In addition to his genuine admiration for the play, McCullough admits having a personal reason for jumping at the chance to direct the piece. As a boy, “All My Sons” was “the first adult play” he saw, at Bennington’s Oldcastle Theatre.
“As a kid, I didn’t really understand all of what was happening, but I still have a visual memory of that production in my head. It had an impact on me, and it was one of the things that first interested me in theater as an idea and prodded me to begin to pursue it as a career.”
In other Miller news, McCullough will be pleased to know that the University at Albany will offer “The Crucible” as its final show of the current season, from April 16 to May 1. The staging will be directed by guest artist Chad Larabee, who helmed “Antigone” for the school last year.